French writers

Lili Sohn – 2027

Lili Sohn – 2027

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Lili Sohn is the fiftieth Randell Cottage resident, and the first graphic novelist to be selected for the residency. Her works have appeared with leading French and Franco-Belgian publishers such as Casterman and Delcourt.

Her project is an exciting, challenging and sensitive one: centring on the complexities surrounding the restitution of a tattooed head or toi moko found in a Rouen museum. Lili proposes to deepen her research for the project by consulting with Te Papa specialists and university academics.

Twenty-fifth anniversary French laureate announced

Twenty-fifth anniversary French laureate announced

Posted on by Randell Cottage

We are delighted to announce, in conjunction with the French Embassy, that Lili Sohn will be the 2027 French writer-in-residence at Randell Cottage. She was chosen from among 28 applicants by a French and NZ selection panel.

Lili’s arrival will mark the beginning of our twenty-fifth anniversary year. She will be the fiftieth Randell Cottage resident, dating from the inaugural writers in 2002, Peter Wells from New Zealand and Nadine Ribault from France.

Lili is the first graphic novelist to be selected for the residency. Her works have appeared with leading French and Franco-Belgian publishers such as Casterman and Delcourt.

Her project is an exciting, challenging and sensitive one: centring on the complexities surrounding the restitution of a tattooed head or toi moko found in a Rouen museum. Lili proposes to deepen her research for the project by consulting with Te Papa specialists and university academics.

Lili and family will join us from early January for a five-month stay. Her visit will include presentations to Alliance Française groups throughout the country, as well as to functions hosted by the Randell Cottage Writers Trust.

Titaua Peu – 2025

Titaua Peu – 2025

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Titaua is considered one of the principal French-speaking voices in the literature of the Pacific, with her writings focusing on Polynesian society, the impact of colonialism and the place of women.

Titaua plans to use her residency to continue working on a major project comprising three volumes, presenting a near future marked by a reverse migration, in which inhabitants of Aotearoa have migrated north to the island of Mangareva following a great war. Combining a futuristic situation with social realism, the narrative will also feature Mā’ohi cosmogony and explore the links between Indigenous peoples of Polynesia, notably Mā’ohi and their Māori descendants.

Titaua is the first-ever Randell Cottage laureate from French Polynesia.

Further reading

Watch Titaua Peu’s video of her stay in Wellington, launched on 3 December 2025

Hinemoana Baker – 2024

Hinemoana Baker – 2024

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Poet and performer Hinemoana Baker (Ngāti Raukawa-ki-te-Tonga, Ngāti Tukorehe, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Kāi Tahu, England, Germany) will be using her six months in residence at Randell Cottage to work on a new collection of poetry, Exhaust World.

Hinemoana is a writer, performer, and educator currently based in Berlin. She has published four previous collections of poetry with Te Herenga Waka University Press: mātuhi | needle (2004), kōiwi kōiwi (2010), waha | mouth (2014) and Funkhaus (2021).

Of her new project Exhaust World she says: “As the name suggests, it will feature poems of despair and desperation. There will also be a good dose of fury, revenge, and some very dark jokes. The overall vibe is, yes, exhausted, both globally and personally. As if the title were an instruction, spoken into the past, and addressed to the machinery of geopolitics in which we find ourselves enmeshed no matter where on earth we live today.”

Hinemoana says she is thrilled to be taking up the residency: “I’m still pinching myself a bit, to be honest. Any opportunity to be able to write uninterrupted, especially with financial support, is extraordinarily appreciated. The huge bonus with this residency, of course, is that it means I can come home for a while. The last eight years in Germany have been extraordinary and formative, to say the least, and I am so looking forward to bringing my full self to the Randell Cottage Writers Residency and to the city I love, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.”

Further reading

Watch an interview with Hinemoana Baker

In this second video, Hinemoana reads the intricately-woven poem Placard: Te Ahumairangi, triggered by the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti in November 2024.

Julien Blanc-Gras – 2024

Julien Blanc-Gras – 2024

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Julien Blanc-Gras is a writer, traveller, journalist, and father, and has explored the four corners of the world, drawing inspiration from his journeys for many of his works.

His debut book, Gringoland, was awarded at the First Novel Festival in Chambéry in 2005. Among his other works are Paradise (before Liquidation) and A Bit of a Special Envoy, written during the lockdown to counter the prevailing atmosphere.

He has also contributed extensively to the print media, with publications in renowned outlets such as M le magazine du Monde, L’Obs, Philosophie magazine, Le Temps, Le 1, Long cours, Aller-Retour, GQ, Technikart, and Grazia. He is also a presence on Radio France with the podcast Oli and a travel column on France Inter, as well as on Radio Nova with a literary column.

Following the birth of his son and his account of his experiences during his partner’s pregnancy in In Utero, he was entrusted with a column in Parents magazine. In his novel Like in War, he continues to explore the theme of fatherhood in our modern world.

Further reading

Watch an interview with Julien Blanc-Gras

Sedef Ecer – 2023

Sedef Ecer – 2023

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Sedef-Ecer. Photo by Brigitte Baudesson

Born in Istanbul, Sedef Ecer grew up in the world of movie-making, theatre and television. Her latest book, Trésor national, was published by JC Lattès in 2021. She writes in different genres and in two languages: she has written more than 500 articles or opinion pieces for the press, novels, screenplays, explored new genres and translated Montaigne, Charlotte Delbo and Saint-Exupery’s works into Turkish.

As a writer and actress, Sedef Ecer has been a nominee or a recipient of prestigious awards. (French National Center of Theater, French National Center of Cinema, Beaumarchais Award, French Society of Multimedia Writers, Draft of a Dream, Velasquez Price, Writing Stipend of Paris Region, National Theater Award of Guérande, High School Students Favorite Play, nominated for Godot Award, Collidram Award, Best Television Comedy La Rochelle Festival) She is one of the founders of Parlement des Écrivaines Francophones.

Her major work is in the field of theatre. Her plays have been performed in numerous theatres and festivals in different countries, published, awarded and translated into Polish, Turkish, Armenian, German, Greek, English, Persian and Italian. As an actress, she has played in feature films and several plays since she was three years old and has worked recently under the directions of Amos Gitaï (with Jeanne Moreau), Lorenzo Gabriel and Thomas Bellorini.

During her stay in Wellington, she hopes to explore an exciting subject: a novel that will focus on the role of New Zealand and Turkish women and the fighting at Gallipoli – her parents live close to the site, and the project is something she has had in mind for some years.

Stuff, 05/03/2023: Turkish-born novelist in NZ to research women and Gallipoli

Further reading

Watch Sedef Ecer – an interview at Randell Cottage, from the French Embassy in Aotearoa New Zealand
Caroline Laurent – 2022/23

Caroline Laurent – 2022/23

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Photo by Philippe Matsas

Born in 1988 and of French-Mauritian origins, Caroline grew up between French Polynesia, Bordeaux, Italy and Paris, where she currently resides. She still travels regularly to Mauritius to visit her maternal family.

Caroline is a graduate of modern French literature and has been an editor for the past 12 years (JC Lattès, Les Escales, Stock). Her areas of interest include contemporary literature and non-fiction.

Following the success of And suddenly, Freedom, co-written with Evelyne Pisier (80,000 copies sold, and awarded Prix Marguerite Duras and Grand Prix des Lycéennes ELLE 2018), in 2020 she released her second novel, The Shores of Anger (Prix Maison de la Presse 2020) in which she pursues her exploration of the colonial world and the lives of prominent women who have shaped history.

Her feminist convictions and commitment to fighting for what she believes in, led her to establish an opinion column against sexual violence in the publishing industry, bringing together 50 literary figures.

Read Caroline’s full report on her stay here: en français / in English

Read Caroline’s report on her second visit (November and December 2023) here: en français / in English

Caroline Laurent – an interview at Randell Cottage, from the French Embassy in Aotearoa New Zealand

Watch the extended interview.

Amaury da Cunha – 2020

Amaury da Cunha – 2020

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Photo of Amaury da CunhaWith a speech therapist mother and a photographer father, it was perhaps almost inevitable that writer and photographer Amaury da Cunha would grow up with a deep understanding of the power of words and images.

Born in Paris, Amaury da Cunha studied modern literature before pursuing photography at the École nationale supérieure de la photographie in Arles. He combines both interests in his work as a photo editor for Le Monde’s literary supplement, in his own writing and exhibitions, and in collaborative projects with other writers and photographers.

His first book, Saccades, a collection of images and texts, was published by Yellow Now. Après tout was released by Caillou Bleu in November 2012, which coincided with his first personal exhibition in Paris for Photography Month. 2015 saw the publication of two books: Fond de l’œil (Roergue), a collection of short texts (odes, meditations, love stories…) on photography; and Incidences (Filigranes), a second collection of images and texts. The autofiction Histoire souterraine (Rouergue) was published in 2017 and followed a year later by Demeure (H’artpon), a book of images accompanied by texts written by Sylvie Gracia.

His photography has been exhibited throughout France and in Belgium.

Amaury da Cunha’s Randell project is an exploration of the life of Minnie Dean, the late nineteenth-century baby farmer who was convicted of infanticide and hanged.

Further reading

Karin Serres – 2019

Karin Serres – 2019

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© Bertrand Couderc

Karin Serres, the Randell Cottage’s 2019 French resident is a novelist, a playwright, for stage and radio, and a translator. She trained as a scenographer and her work with staging and performance turned her to writing. She has written over 80 plays for radio and stage, winning national awards for that work, and has also written children’s picture books and young adult fiction.

Her first novel for adults, Monde sans oiseaux (a world without birds) was published in 2013 and in 2015, she was awarded a French national honour – Chevalier des artes et lettres – for her contribution to literature.

Karin’s Randell project is a sequel to her 2018 novel, Happa no ko le peuple de feuilles (Happa no ko the leaf people). She says that writing somewhere else, in an unknown place, is one of her favourite sources of creative energy, that her work thrives on new perspectives.

In this interview, recorded by the communications team of the Embassy of France in New Zealand at the mid-point of her residency, Karin talks about her work and her interest in New Zealand.